Saturday, February 23, 2008

Religion

Religion is not a good word to define our preferences .What we eat, how we behave, how we react or to believe in a higher power or not , can never be defined by religion alone. We as humans have diverse interests and our behavior is shaped due to our attitudes and affinities. May be the whole approach to isolate us into one religion is very irrational. I liked what Dalai Lama's view on religion is he compares different religions to a table with different varieties of food. When a person wants to eat he/she takes little of different varieties and in the quantity he/she likes.Instead of providing a space in applications/forms, where you should enter a particular religion.. there should be more space provided to write a paragraph on your basic beliefs. That gives a more general insight into the person .If the person whole heartedly believes in one single religion ..then he/she can write down the name of the single religion. By doing this we can reduce the different barriers we create starting from how we identify ourselves.

I love reading about other religions. even ancient/ tribal religions included. Most of the religions have a foundation set out by another religion. All the religious fanatics don’t read history and have no interest in archeology. If they could dig little bit into the past centuries they will know why the world is shaped up this way. I feel any belief system which says that the other belief system is inferior or superior is going to end up in forming into a cult society. All religions are assimilation of the practices of the native people. When we discriminate the minor sects present in a religion we are contradicting the principles which built the religion in the first place. The problem of caste system which is present in Indian system is in itself a contradiction. Most of the people understand and interpret caste in their own limitations. But I am confident that caste system was not formed to discriminate but it was a effective tool for finding out the occupation of a person. But it gets used for the wrong purpose and again a system is used to make life miserable instead of simplifying things.Religion went a whole circle of uplifting a person and improving the society but it caused lot of destruction also. Now the place of religion is taken by science.